Six Years Before The Mast

Reflections on my time as a columnist for Power & Motoryacht.

- Mike Peters

Writing this column has been a very rewarding experience for me. I had never had a column before, yet I was granted the freedom to discuss my personal views and experiences from a lifetime spent inside the boating industry.

I’ve written 72 columns, and yet the magazine rejected only two of my pieces. One of them was among my favorites; titled “Lost Diamonds,” the column criticized the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show as an inept venue for the sale of boats, as they were all stacked up, side by side. That one sent shudders through the editors who feared they would lose their jobs because their company owned the boat show at the time. I learned the limits of my autonomy on that one.

The column that garnered the most reader feedback was “Locked and Loaded.” In it, I questioned whether I should carry a gun aboard my new boat. The piece came out shortly after one of our country’s mass shootings, and it was my way of entering the gun debate.